All Roads Lead to South Hadley

UPDATE 9:00 PM So the venerable Republican did a (slow) live blog of the meeting and to no surprise the system closed in to protect itself. School Committee Chair Edward J. Boisselle cut off the first speaker saying he was being "offensive".

And when main critic Luke Gelinas publicly asked for Superintendent Gus Sayer, and high school Principal Daniel T. Smith to resign or be fired the School Chair threw him out of the meeting. By meeting close the diffident School Committee failed to take any action on sanctioning school employees for failing to protect 15-year-old Phoebe Prince.

I have a feeling this is F-A-R from over.
#############################################
ORIGINAL POST 10:00 AM

Tonight's South Hadley School Committee meeting should be nothing if not interesting--a real shootout at the OK Corral.

I'll put my money on critic Darby O'Brien--not just because he's Irish or a Public Relations pro--but because he's right. And righteousness will not be denied. The point man is usually first to draw fire.

Of course I've been there a few times myself--what with the Amherst Select Board mulling a Muzzle Larry Kelley ordinance.

What public officials the world over never seem to understand is that passionate critics--even the ones who shoot from the hip--are motivated from their very core. Perhaps, in this case, the reason South Hadley officials don't get it is because they themselves sorely lack a core.

The Springfield Republican reports

You can always go..

Why God invented the Power of the Blog

So you have to wonder how many folks at home we're still watching three hours into last week's Select Board meeting when the Town Manager gave this soliloquy.

A blog is exactly the place for this kind of "transparent" information, access to answers (not that the Town Manager ever responded on his blog) without the bother of numerous phone calls. The Town Manager started his blog over two years ago with great fanfare and managed to average 1.25 posts per month in his rookie year, falling to 1 per month the next year and now averaging 1 every three months.

But hey, what do you expect for a lousy $128,000 per year.


Mr. Shaffer's seldom used platform

NIMBYs on the attack

So the property was plenty big enough--parking included--for Harkness Road High School, a private, non-profit, co-ed day school established 1987 in what was formerly a retail poultry business situated on five acres.

They educated students in grades seven through twelve, utilizing 2,400 square feet (four rooms) of class space, and averaged approximately 20 students each year.

But now suddenly traffic is an issue with a Mosque? Especially a Mosque in the People's Republic of Amherst where attendance is expected to be two to five people coming for daily prayers, up to 10 people for night prayers and around 50 people attending Friday services, which take place at 1 p.m.

And interestingly the immediate long-time neighbor to the property is a commercial welding business.

But hey, at least the fifty or so complainers are not playing the terrorist card--at least not yet.

Space Pod lands in Hadley!

Probably about the ONLY thing that would attract the same media attention as the Phoebe Prince suicide story.

The media

travels in packs.

This was more than apparent this morning in front of the Juvenile Courthouse in Hadley Center for the arraignment of three juveniles in the Phoebe Prince bullying case that has taken on the aura of the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Can you imagine how much it costs for those satellite vans and support staff? These days some yokel like me with a $100 point-and-shoot digital camera, $250 netbook and a Wifi connection can do it all instantaneously.

Moo Moos in the mist